NextLevel Program Graduates Learn To Make Small Businesses Prosper

Working Woman Report is the source for stories about women in business, women in leadership, and news about empowering women.
It's updated daily and curated by Emmy Award Winning Journalist, Allison Haunss.

Wendy Buckner knows that first hand because in 2008 she took part in the inaugural CreateHere Springboard, a program that helped entrepreneurs turn their ideas into businesses and eventually evolved into today’s Company Lab entrepreneur “incubator.”

Now Wendy Buckner has taken part in the first-ever class of a new program meant to help existing Chattanooga-area business owners thrive.

At a Thursday night ceremony, she was recognized as one of 16 business owners to graduate from the first round of classes in a program called NextLevel that’s offered by the Urban League of Greater Chattanooga.

“I highly recommend it to other business owners. Especially people without a business background like me,” Buckner said. “It’s going to teach you how to create a growth plan.”

Buckner said the NextLevel program got her to realize she needs to back off from day-to-day operations and focus on the big picture.

The program also exposed her to a book that she likes and recommends, “The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It.”

And Buckner said it helped to get away from the Hot Chocolatier, where she regularly works 80-hour weeks, to rub elbows with other small business owners.

“This class brought us all together, and I’m like, ‘You have that problem, too?'”

Participants were required to be in business at least three years, have at least one full-time employee besides the owner, and have $250,000 to $10 million in revenue. Each business owner paid $1,000 to take seven months of night classes. That helped cover the expense of the program, which got most of its funding from the Lyndhurst and Benwood foundations, said Warren Logan, president and CEO of the Urban League.